Employee Morale

Imagine it's the end of the semester. Students are pulling all-nighters to complete term papers and study for final exams. The stress level is off the charts, and some students reach for the pack of cigarettes for a "quick smoke" to help calm their nerves. For the growing number of colleges and universities that have adopted tobacco-free policies, this is their final exam.

Every day when an employee resigns from their job, either voluntarily (or involuntarily) they’re “walking out the door” with a very valuable asset. No these instances don’t require security or are considered criminal in nature. What they leave with is their institutional knowledge or memory from their last organization. This is what happens to an organization loses its best, brightest, most experienced and knowledgeable employees. What do they take with them, and what do we lose? Part of it is the organization’s institutional knowledge or history.

Summer months on college and university campuses are typically filled with a multitude of facilities projects ranging from required maintenance and renovations to new building construction. The period between spring commencement and fall convocation are important months for renewing facilities, as the majority of students, and many faculty, are not on campus and therefore not inconvenienced by construction during these months. But how do colleges sell the benefits of facilities projects and campus expansions during a time when expense reduction measures are negatively impacting personnel?

University administrators across the country are deciding to add sex reassignment surgery to their health insurance plans. For example, in recent history, UC-Berkeley, Duke University, and the University of Illinois-Chicago have all adopted this change.

As a readily accessible labor pool, student workers have long been an integral part of most institutions’ human resource planning, as well as a basic component of financial aid work-study programs.﻿ At Oakton Community College (Ill.) orientation sessions, new student employees get a crash course in business etiquette. ﻿

With the disruptive force and explosive growth of MOOCs, online courses could become more like televised sports and applied research, with a serious emphasis on who owns—and who should profit from—the content. Here are four discussion-opening questions about intellectual property rights today.

Texas Tech University is the only school in Texas to have an undergraduate institution, law school, and medical school on the same campus. It is also the U.S. university with the happiest employees, according to a new top 10 list released by CareerBliss, an online community featuring company reviews, salaries, and job listings.

Disputes over intellectual property (IP) rights have been around as long as faculty members have been producing ideas. Whether it’s a cure for a disease, a textbook, or even a syllabus, ownership and IP rights are dictated by a policy at every college and university in the United States.

In her role as web manager and assistant director of institutional marketing at Elms College (Mass.), Karolina Kilfeather routinely relies on student workers to help carry the department’s workload. She has found that while they may make valuable contributions, students often pose special management challenges.